1. Field of Invention
The invention relates generally to ascertaining finger position during typing and more specifically to providing continuous feedback on finger position during typing.
2. Art Background
Learning to type on a keyboard when a person does not look at the keyboard during typing is referred to as “blind typing” or “touch typing.” During properly executed blind typing, the person's eyes are either on a paper, which is the source of content being typed, or the person's eyes are on the computer screen associated with the word processing system. Proficiency at blind typing can result in much higher typing rates than can be achieved when a person has to look at the keyboard in order to find the correct key. However, blind typing takes time to learn. Often a person who is learning to blind type does not know which key a finger is over. This can result in mistakes during typing which decrease the rate of typing correctly spelled words. This can present a problem.
Some keyboards place indicia, such as a small raised bump, on two keys for example, the “F” key and the “J” key for location with the pointer finger of a left and right hand respectively, these are called “Home” keys. Home keys assist the person in finding the home position however it is still a time consuming process to memorize a keyboard layout so that a person can type accurately without looking at the keyboard. This can present a problem. Some keyboards such as virtual keyboards do not have physical keys on which indicia could be placed for home keys. Thus, virtual keyboards can present steeper learning curves to a person learning to type. This can present a problem.
Even with indicia to identify home keys, mistakes made during blind typing are exacerbated by lack of familiarity with a given keyboard layout. Not all keyboards have the keys arranged in the same order, for example, the following acronyms refer to several keyboard layouts QWERTY, AZERTY, Dvorak, ABCDE, and XPeRT. Moving from one keyboard to another presents a new learning experience to a person, which can result in an increased typing error rate. This can present a problem.
Wearable computing devices are worn by a person and include a data display built into eye glasses or goggles for example. At times a person wearing a wearable computer device might be constrained by the activity and prevented from looking at a keyboard which is being used as an input device for the wearable computing device. Input error can result from blind typing when the wrong key is pressed due to the user not knowing which key a finger is over at a given point in time. This can present a problem.